Heartless Riku

Heartless Riku of Kingdom Hearts
view Gren's Cosplay Lab profile

Category: Video Game

Inspiration: Image coplywritten to Doug Durham.
The time, as always, is just a guess.

Gloves
made with a pattern I constructed myself by takign an old pair of gloves apart. The pattern can be found under my cosplay.com gallery, as well as instructions. It will need to be sized appropriately to accomodate your hand. They were made with the same spandex as the main portion of the bodysuit.

Bodysuit
This big boy is actually two bodysuits sewn together, with pillow stuffing carefully put into the space between the layers. It. Took. Forever. It also made the costume feel like I was wearing a skintight quilt, in Texas heat. The Spandex was originally blue and red. No black spandex was used. That's alll done with the aid of sharpie markers (fabric dye just didn't give me what I wanted)

Boots
These are boot covers, and how I do love them. They began their life as a pair of sandals. I figured out a pattenr using craft foam, cut it from 1/4 inch thick upholstry foam, cut it from spandex, sewed the two together, and then attached them to the soles of the sandals with my trusty staple gun. A zipper was installed on the back, and craft foam was used to make the top detail.

Heartless mark I was really fond of this thing. It's made of suede, which completely just sucks in every scrap of light and refuses to return it, and the red was made with the same fabric as Mima, which has this beatuiful subtle metallic shine to it. It's held onto the bodysuit with a series of snaps, which... sometimes... come undone... -_-;;

Skirt and belts
This is one layer of thick ass interfacing, to shape the skirt peice, and then three layers of gauze, cut into the tiers of points. really simple to do, but I loved the effect. The belts are just spandex wrapped around more thick ass interfacing, the buckle from a salvation army belt I brutally murdered, and the trim peices crafted from sculpey.

Keyblade
The shaft is a simple PVC pipe, the hilt and blade are foam board cut to the sspprop shape, then fiberglassed for strength, then a layer of foam was applied over that, to make the keyblades soft so security wouldn't have issues. They needed to be very strong as we carried out a full speed and strnegth battle with them, and did not want to risk a wrong move resulting in a peice of the keyblade flying off into the audience. (This is also why Sora's Kingdom Key does not have it's keychain. Too risky in a fight.)

Wig
My baaaaby! This is another hand made wig. The fiber was hand colored to be silver at the top, and fade to white at the tips. The hair is just in one solid spiral, unlike Sora's, and was also styled using a product called Hair Cement by Beyond the Zone. I love the stuff. I'll swear by it!

Favorite Aspect: The keyblade. It was light and well balanced and swinging it around was just plain fun.

Least Favorite Aspect: It's hot! It's so freaking hot! I boil in my own speat in Riku!

Easiest Task: Making the acessories like the belt end and the little jewelry peices that go on his cross straps.

Hardest Task: Getting it done in time!!

Awards:

Grand Prize at O-Chibi Con '04
2nd place overall at A-kon 15